Book Description ‘A swashbuckling thriller – Pirates of the Caribbean meets Firefly – that nevertheless combines the author’s trademark hard SF with effective, coming-of-age characterisation’ GUARDIAN‘A blindingly clever imagining of our solar system in the far flung future’ SUNReturning to the universe of Revenger, award-winning author Alastair Reynolds delivers another thrilling tale set among the stars.Two sisters ran away from home to join the crew of a spaceship. They took on pirates, faced down monsters and survived massacres . . . and now they’re in charge. Captaining a fearsome ship of their own, adventures are theirs for the taking. But Captain Bosa’s fearsome reputation still dogs their heels, and they’re about to discover that, out in space, no one forgives, and no one forgets . . .‘A rollicking adventure yarn with action, abduction, fights, properly scary hazards, very grisly torture and even ghosts of a sort’ DAILY TELEGRAPH‘By far the most enjoyable book Reynolds has ever written’ SFX Customers Review: Great book, except for the end where he starts pontificating about his liberal socialism . Socialism sounds nice in theory,but in practice gives you Venezuela.
I was 5-star impressed with “Revenger”, the first novel in this sequence. Reynolds gave us a kind-of steampunk future that had a lot of interesting concepts, a mystery to solve, and some fish out of water protagonists to kick things along. We’re into the third novel now and the gloss has come off. Indeed, it’s a measure of how uninvolved I was that the Kindle version of “Bone Silence” dropped into my reading list at the end of January and I’ve only just finished it. And tellingly, this period included a couple of work trips where I had lots of time on my hands, time that I spent doing things other than reading this novel.So, the basics are that the Ness sisters continue their quest to understand quoins and the repeating cycles of civilizations emerging from the ashes of prior epochs. They have a pirated pirate ship to do this in, and some determined enemies hunting them. It *should* make for a tense, taut thriller, and because it’s science fiction, it *should* have a ton of engaging new concepts to capture our imagination and spirit us into our far future. But it doesn’t. It’s like Reynolds has run out of imaginative puff, and now we’re left with a pretty pedestrian chase sequence, told almost exclusively in alternating ‘one sister, the other sister’ viewpoints that fail to capitalize on all the other viewpoints at play. Including some alien ones, that would have been particularly novel and its not like Reynolds can’t convey sophisticated perspectives, he’s certainly done that before.The problem is that the problems Adrana and Arafura run into seem like padding. There is a HUGE mystery to solve in their little world, but it does not feel that it needs over 1,000 pages between three books, to solve it. If it’s even solved. That’s another niggle. I am not sure that this sequence is just a trilogy, the ending is so limp. Is another book coming?Irrespective, I get that having set up a powerful mystery, you need a serious payoff for the reader, but it really did feel as though the big reveal was more “Hmmm” than “Wow”. Which was a shame, because the hints of stranger things are pretty compelling. Quoins are clearly more than anyone expected based on the second novel, and Adrana has always had a bee in her bonnet about the crash and burn and start again that’s been going on across deep time. I was keen to find out what it all meant. And I kind of did. But not really.So, who to recommend this to. Obviously, reading “Revenger” and “Shadow Captain” is the price of admission for “Bone Silence”, but should I now retrospectively suggest that if you’ve not read “Revenger” you shouldn’t buy it? Honestly, I’m not sure. Reynolds is still a solid storyteller, but if I reflect on Peter F. Hamilton’s latest, this seriously misses the mark. It is not bad science fiction. But it is not terrific either and across three books my star rating has gone five, then four, and now three. I don’t think that Reynolds is dialing it in, but perhaps this sequence should have been two books instead of three and perhaps the editor could have been slashing and burning harder. Because, for me, this one has too much ho-hum narrative going on, and that’s always going to be a disappointing read.
Book two was great and left many open questions and mysteries. I simply could not wait for bone silence to come and answer all of them. Unfortunately the book does none of that. it does resolve a mystery or two but the total is quite disappointing. After all the dramatic world building almost nothing new is revealed and the series pretty much ends in a cutoff. No real conclusion to the story.
Reynold’s’ stuff never fails to be fun and interesting. He is certainly one of the best around today. I loved this series. Hate to see it end. The misunderstood pirate idea is fun and he does the banter like they would likely talk, just as the swashbucklers did. Read everything he writes as soon as it comes out. Would like to see the mysterious ancient aliens developed more.
Uh.. Did Reynolds write this? I was so looking forward to reading this book and continuing the adventures of the sisters. What i found was a book that was just was not up to par with what i come to expect from Reynolds. The first 2 books in the series were great, full of adventure and interesting characters. This book was just dull, uninspired, with a terrible ending that left to many questions (even Reynolds says he’s done with the story for now). I really hate giving it only 2 stars because i love Reynold’s previous works, but i felt like he got tired 2/3 the way through writing and just gave up.
After the awesome first book, Revenger, the second one (Shadow Captain) was a bit of a disappointment in terms of story and pace. Bone Silence picks up the mantle nicely again, focusing more on the world the characters live in, and going further in the bigger picture of the Ness sisters’ lives.A difficult book not to recommend if you’ve read the previous two. If you haven’t and like stories defying genres, pick up Revenger.
Alastair Reynolds notes that he has no further plans at this time for the Ness sisters of this trilogy. While all of the books move a tad slow for my liking, the author solves some of the mysteries of this particular universe. Always a good read.
Creative and well written. Meets the high standard of his other excellent publications.Ties up all loose ends while providing context for follow-up story. |
38 reviews